PHYSICAL SCIENCES TO SCIENCE IN GENERAL. 223 



niately related branches, to find tliat the ijreater the men, the more 

 decided is their mental individuality, and the less one would be able to 

 perform the works of the other. To-day we cannot, of course, go further 

 than to characterize the most general differences of intellectual work in 

 the ditYerent branches of science. 



I have reminded you of the gigantic extent of the materials of our 

 sciences. It is clear that the greater their extent, the more neces- 

 sary it is to obtain a better and more accurate organization and arrange- 

 ment, in order not to become hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of learning. 

 The better the order and system, the greater may the accumulation of 

 details become without injuring the connection. Our time becomes all 

 the more profitable in working out details, because our i)redecessors 

 have tauglit ns the organization of science. 



This organization consists, in the first jilace, in an external mechan- 

 ical arrangement, as found in our catalogues, lexicons, registers, indexes, 

 literary reviews, yearly reports, digests of laws, systems of natural 

 history, etc. By the aid of these we gain only because all knowledge which 

 it is not necessary to keep constantly in mind can be found at any mo- 

 ment by those who need it. 



By means of a good lexicon a student of a preparatory school can 

 accomplish much in the study of the classics that uuist have proved 

 difficult to ^rrt.sm«s, in spite of life-long reading. Works of this kind 

 are, as it were, the scientific capital of mankind, with the interest of 

 which the business is carried on. We might compare them to cajntal 

 invested in lands. Like the earth, of which the lands are composed, the 

 knowledge contained in these catalogues, lexicons, and indexes looks 

 little inviting, and the ignorant cannot appr«4ciate the labor and expense 

 lavished on these acres; the work of the plowman seems excessively 

 difficult, laborious, and tedious. Although, however, the work of the 

 lexicographer or of the compiler of systems of natural history requires 

 as much perseverance and diligence as that of the plowman, it nuist not 

 be believed that it is of a subordinate or secondary nature, or that it is 

 as dry and mechanical as it looks afterward, when the catalogue lies 

 printed before us. Every single lact nuist be discovered by attentive 

 observation ; it must afterward be verified and comi)arrd, and the im- 

 portant must be separated from the unimportant. None can do this 

 but those who have a clear understanding of the object of the collection 

 and of the intellectual import of the science and its methods; and for 

 such men every single fact will be of peculiar interest in its iclations to 

 the whole science. Otherwise such work would be the most intolerable 

 drudgery that could be imagined. That the progressive development 

 of science has its influence on these works also is seen in the fact that 

 new lexicons, new^ systems of natural history, new digests of laws, new 

 catalogues of stars, are constantly found necessarj^ They testify to the 

 l)rogress of the methods and the organization of knowledge. 



But our knowledge must not remain idle in the form of catalogues ; 



